Countdown to Copenhagen

This next week will be all about COP15 - the 15th meeting about climate change from all the big guns. It runs from December 7-18th, and we're hoping we can get students writing letters and signing petitions and somehow getting involved in the democratic process. Climate Action Network Canada sent out info on how to get going, and I'll pass it along here. Also check out Seal the Deal for more ideas.

We're putting up a display with the information below, and handing out half sheets of paper, double sided, with sample letters on one side and addresses on the other. But on top of that, some very dedicated students want to put together a video kind of like this, with as many students as possible to send off instead of a petition. "Before It's Too Late" will have some original music, and some singing and many voices in unison each saying one sentence of a letter to Stephen Harper. When it's done, you can see it first right here!


In our display, the information is separated, all with different fonts of various colours. Here's it's just straight info. Do with it what you will.

December 7-18, more than 15,000 people including Government officials and advisers from 192 nations and the media from nearly every country in the world will come together in the Danish capital in one of the most significant gatherings in history. It is being called the most complex and vital agreement the world has ever seen as they will negotiate agreements for countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – Kyoto Redux: This one’s for keeps!

Stephen Harper wrote a letter back in 2002 that said:
“We're gearing up now for the biggest struggle our party has faced since you entrusted me with the leadership....I'm talking about the 'battle of Kyoto' — our campaign to block the job-killing, economy-destroying Kyoto accord.... Carbon dioxide is essential for life!”
Harper's letter dismisses Kyoto as 'socialist scheme'. CBC News, Tuesday, January 30, 2007.

Let’s make sure Harper gets an attitude adjustment. Write a letter to tell him what really matters.
www.climateactionnetwork.ca
• Sign the online KYOTOplus petition
• Write your own letter
• Be part of KCI’s video petition this Friday. Listen to the announcements for details!

SAMPLE LETTER
Date

MP name
TITLE
ADDRESS

Dear Name

Global warming is the greatest threat to life on earth. Entire populations and ecosystems are threatened by devastating impacts such as drought, heat waves, fires, floods, storms, and rising sea levels.

Scientists have warned the United Nations that only urgent action can avert uncontrollable, runaway climate change.

Green solutions will create thousands of jobs and build a strong economy.

To preserve our environment and ensure a livable world for our children, I call on Canadian politicians to support these KYOTOplus goals:
• Set a national target to cut greenhouse gas emissions at least 25% from 1990 levels by 2002.
• Implement an effective national plan to reach this target and help developing countries to reduce their emissions and adapt to climate change.
• Adopt a bold, strengthened second phase of teh Kyoto Protocol at the pivotal United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, December 2009.

The Government of Canada must act NOW to make climate change our highest priority.

Sincerely,

Your Name

Come to the A.O. for a handout of this sample letter and addresses.

Check out www.climateactionnetwork for more information.

Addresses: You can write to any governmental figure without a stamp, or e-mail them!

Peter Braid is the local Member of Parliament. 22King Street S. Waterloo, ON N2J 1N8 (braidp1@parl.gc.ca)

Also write Stephen Harper: Office of the Prime Minister, 80 Wellington Street, Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2 (pm@pm.gc.ca)

To view which MPs have not already signed the KYOTOplus politician’s pledge, visit: http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/campaigns/kyotoplus/pledge

Mailed letters count for more than e-mail, but make sure it’s out by the end of November to get there in time!

Personalize your letter by expanding on topics such as...
• Intergenerational justice – youth are inheriting a world that is in climate crisis. Future generations deserve better.
• Climate justice – richer countries have a moral obligation to take more responsibility for climate change than poorer countries. Poor people have the right to attain a certain level of development before being responsible for emissions.
• Tar sands – Canada is increasing tar sands production, despite the fact that greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands are three times those of conventional oil and gas production.
• Democracy – Canadians want to stop climate change. Since we live in a democracy, we need politicians to represent the will of the people.

Under Kyoto, which we agreed to in 2002, we were supposed to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% from 1990 levels by 2012.

So far, Canada has increased emissions by 33.8%.

(We’re way worse than the U.S. on this one! – Shhh.)

Of the countries who signed Kyoto, Denmark had the greatest reduction of 22%! It IS possible.

In May 2007, the Friends of the Earth sued the federal government for failing to meet the Kyoto Protocol obligations to cut greenhouse gas emissions. How embarrassing!

Let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again. Tell Harper this is important!  
At Copenhagen, they’ll be discussing what number to set as a target for reduction - between 25 and 40% by 2020. What does that mean for you?? How can you help??

• drive less, walk more
• turn off lights and monitors
• use power bars for phantom loads
• eat less meat
• buy fewer non-essentials
• buy stuff with the least amount of packaging
• use less hot water
• play in the park instead of watching TV
• turn your thermostat down in winter
• ditch the air conditioning in summer
• use less paper and use re-use-it paper
• plant trees

Canada has a tiny window of opportunity to move from laggard to leader. The stakes have never been higher, and the costs of failure are all but unthinkable. The Canadian Government CAN be moved on this issue, but only if we make it happen.

Let’s rise to the challenge.

No amounts of money will save the planet once climate change crosses the danger threshold.

below the fold

Food Inc.

I offered seeing Food Inc. as a bonus project for my students and only had 2/30 takers. The title sounds boring. And to tell you the truth, the pacing is a bit slow and tedious. I was started checking my watch after about an hour. Some say it tried to do too much at once. But the subject matter is fascinating. The facts are all American, but much of our stores our filled with US produce. It's making me ensure all my produce is either organically grown or from Ontario or both where possible. "You can change the world with every bite."

Here's a brief synopsis of the main points with lots of links for more information. If the movie's not playing near you, then read below and watch this instead:


The way we eat changed more in the past 50 years than in the previous 50,000. We still have the image of agrarian America, but that's no longer the reality. We don't eat fresh tomatoes; they're picked green and ripened with ethyline gas.

This world is deliberately hidden from us.

Lifting the Veil

1930s drive-in fast food McDonald's stores changed how beef was processed. It started the rise of efficient assembly-line production. (The same factory mentality hit the schools too - and now we're finally exploring the problems with it.)

1970s - the top five companies control 25% of the market
2005 - the top four companies control 80% of the market: Cargill, Tyson, Smithfield, ConAgra

Richard Lobb - National Chicken Council

We can grow chickens twice as big in half the time but their bones and internal organs can't keep up the the rapid growth. They can't walk, and they get sick easier, so antibiotics are put in their feed. Even sick chickens go to the plant for processing. The farmers end up as slaves to the corporations which insist on barn upgrades. Farmers typically borrow over half a million to start off, and make about $18,000/year for their efforts.

Cornucopia of Choices

Michael Pollan - Omnivore's Dilemma

We have an illusion of diversity, but only a few companies and only a few products are produced. A huge number of products are filled with corn. Corn is subsidized by the government, so producers find ways to get it into everything to make food cheaper. It's a commodity crop because it can be stored and engineered.

Larry Johnson - Center for Crop Utilization Research

High-fructose corn syrup and soya is in 90% of products including feed for cows, pigs, chickens and fish. Cheap corn means cheap feed and cheap meat. But it also means a sub-standard product.

CAFO - Concentrated Animal Feed Operation

Cows shouldn't be eating corn. They should eat grass. I wrote about that a bit more here in which it's suggested that eating grass-fed cows can even help you lose weight. High corn diets in cows lead to e-coli that are antibiotic resistant. Cows stand in manure all day, and the manure gets in the meat. This was made explicit in Schosser's Fast Food Nation which is a great read (much better than the film of that name).

Unintended Consequences

We're getting tainted meat, but also tainted spinach and juice, etc. from run-off from the farms. The regulators (FDA) are too tied to the corporations so people get away with atrocities.
1972 - there were 50,000 FDA inspections
2006 - there were 9,164
The regulatory agencies are toothless.

Barb Kowalcyk and Patricia Buck are food safety advocates hoping to stop the self-policing in industries after Barb's son died of e-coli, initiating Kevin's Law, which is not yet passed. Our food is killing people They want any contamination in a plant to mean the plant has to be shut-down until cleaned up. But the courts decided it's unconstitutional to stop businesses from running. "We put faith in our government, and we're not being protected at the most basic level." The new law would return ability to shut down plants to the USDA. Unfortunately, the industry is more protected than the citizens.

If we feed cows grass, they will naturally shed 80% of the e-coli in their guts within 5 days. But instead, we want high-tech solutions. So we mix ammonium hydroxide filler with hamburgers to kill the bacteria. Yum.

The Dollar Menu

Poor people have no time to cook and no money to buy fresh vegetables, so they're stuck eating fast food. McDonald's shouldn't be cheaper than veggies. The food system is scewed to bad calories because of the subsidized commodity crops. The biggest predictor of obesity is income level. We're hard-wired to like salt, fat, and sugar, and the industry has taken advantage of this without responsibility.

We're getting spikes of insulin which is wearing down our body. One in three Americans born after 2000 will get diabetes.

In the Grass

Joel Salatin - Polyface Farms

Giant factory farms are faster, fatter, bigger, and cheaper, but not better. Polyface is an all grass-based family farm. The cows move through the grass and fertilize as they graze. This is more economical than growing corn, transporting it, then moving the manure out and creating toxic run-off in the water system. "We've allowed ourselves to become disconnected and ignorant." Instead of bathing chickens in chlorine baths, they give them enough space that they don't become sickly.

A culture of technicians is into the "how" of it, but nobody's asking "why".

Eduard Peno - union organizer

The corporations don't worry about the comfort of their workers because they're temporary - just like the animals. Their fingernails separate from their fingers from infections. They're poor people that can't afford to quit. IBP (Tyson) took labour practices from the fast food industry. They won't have unions. They hire lots of illegal immigrants. NAFTA has put 1.5 million Mexican farmers out of business so they have to come to the US to find work illegally. The government cracks down on the workers, but never on the company that hires them. They get rid of 15 workers/day in a deal with immigration It's all to get the cheapest price for food.

New Alchemy Institute

We can't stop capitalism. We need to be a Goliath. If enough people buy organic, like Stoneyfield yogurt, then the larger corporations will start selling organic. Now WalMart is selling organic because the customers want it.

From Seed to the Supermarket

Monsanto was allowed to patent seeds since 1980. This makes it illegal to save seeds from plants to grow again next year, and gives Monsanto the monopoly on food manipulation (GMO).
They made DDT, Agent Orange, and Round-Up. Now they make "Round-Up Ready" crops so we can spray all the crops with herbicides and the crops will be protected genetically.
1996 - 2% round-up ready crops
2008 - 90%

Farmers are finding it's cheaper to pay Monsanto's fines than actually try to fight the corporation. Even farmers who's crops were downwind from a Monsanto field are being charged because cross-pollination is seen as theft.

The Veil

There are myriad government links to Monsanto including Clarence Thomas, Rumsfield, Shapiro, Kanter... not to mention other problems with GMOs.

They have the power to do whatever works best for the company including preventing labelling laws. Schwartzenegger vetoed SB-68, a law that enables lawsuits against corporations. Now 70% of processed food is genetically modified. It's even against the law to criticize products in the veggie-libel laws. Oprah was sued by the meat industry for saying she doesn't eat burgers. It cost her $1 million to fight them. It's a felony to criticize ground beef.

Shocks to the System

Farmers will deliver what people demand. Vote with your feet, and buy organic!

below the fold

Drink responsibly. Use a travel mug.

Last week we focused on composting, trying to convince teachers to bring their waste to the nearest buckets, and trying to convince students to take the apple core or banana peel to the bucket instead of using the garbage can. Our garbage survey showed that we have about 10 pounds of compost in the garbage every day. I'm hoping we can reduce this number without putting more buckets everywhere. It just takes 10 minutes to empty it all at the end of the day. If we have buckets in every floor and wing of the school, it'll take half an hour.

I also included information on No Impact Man in our display case. He lived a year without making a significant impact on the world. If we all did that.....

This week we'll be focusing on paper cups, particularly Tim Horton's which surround the school on all sides. Our school tosses six pounds of cups a day. Six pounds. There's stats and info here and here and here.

That's it.
below the fold

The Backlash

Hey, let's keep trashing the planet in case Al Gore is wrong!

According to a the Huffington Post, the number of Americans who believe that climate change is connected to human-caused pollution is at its lowest point in three years. Only 57% of Americans now believe this inconvenient truth -- down from 77% in 2006, when Al Gore's film was released.


Phelim McAleer is the director and producer of an anti-climate change film, Not Evil Just Wrong, that's been screened recently. In a nutshell, Gore made a few errors in the film, errors he addressed later, but McAleer jumps on some alternative scientific views such as, "Ice is the enemy of life," which make it clear to his followers that global warming will actually save us all.

Change is hard and terribly inconvenient, and we desperately want to believe it's all a big lie because that would be very nice, wouldn't it.

Suzuki was in town last weekend. I missed it because of a flu, but a colleague mentioned two things he said that are lingering with me this week. The first, demographers predict that we'll have 9.2 billion people by 2050, but Suzuki thinks we'll actually lose about 90% of our population in the next 100 years as we eradicate one eco-system after another. We can't survive if the oceans and forests are depleted. McAleer's film suggests Gore thinks the end of the world is coming. Not at all. It's just a dramatic reduction in the population of our species. The world will be fine without us.

The second thing Suzuki said was that the most important thing educators can do is to tell each student to go home and tell their parents, "If you love me, you will do everything you can to stop harming the earth."

I put this second message on our hallway display board. I leave the first message for classroom discussions.

And, of course, if people are wavering on the brink of inaction because they're not sure it's worth it, because we'll all die anyway or because it's all a big conspiracy created because Gore has money invested in solar panels or something, then watch Greg Craven's exploration of the issue using a Pascal's Wager type of analysis.

We're really making a huge choice between these worst case scenarios: If Gore's wrong, and we all stop driving as much, turn the furnace down, recycle the A/C, stop buying so much crap, eat less meat, insist on organic produce, etc., then we might have an economic depression for a time as some jobs are lost particularly in oil-dependent industries. But other jobs will be created in solar and wind power, on farms that will require more human power, etc. So in a matter of time, people will shift employment, and the economy will re-stabilize. It will likely never recover to where it was two years or so ago, but that was an unhealthy gain anyway - for obvious reasons.

The second option we have to choose from is, if Gore's right, and we all do nothing differently. If we choose this option, we will become extinct.

I'm having problems uploading the video, so you'll have to click here.

Then buy Greg's book which just about killed him to write!

below the fold

Shop Mindfully

This is our third eco-challenge. Since we'll be celebrating Me to We day on Friday we're focusing on the Free the Children campaign by getting out awareness of the ways children are employed or enslaved worldwide. The display will have info on fair trade products as well as samples of coffee and chocolates. This all fits well with Re-Think Waterloo's presentation of David Suzuki talking about what we can do to change the world this coming Saturday at Centre in the Square. There will also be many displays and the culmination of this year's 7th Generation Challenge in which local high school students try to figure out the best way to make a difference.

On Friday we'll also be showing the Me to We day speakers in the auditorium on a loop so people in MSIP classes can opt to be inspired instead of reading.

Here's some info on fair trade products:



On Chocolate:

Free Trade Chocolate

Cadbury, Nestle, Mars, Hershey’s, Toblerone... (Mars + Hershey’s = 2/3 of US chocolate)

Sold everywhere

Big companies purchase cocoa on international exchanges where cocoa from the Ivory Coast is mixed with cocoa from other countries. It’s estimated that 40% of this chocolate is from known slave plantations.

90% of Ivory Coast cacao plantations use slave labour – mostly young men and boys as young as nine from impoverished areas enticed by traffickers who promise them paid work, then sell them to plantation owners who beat them, forcing them to work 18-hour days. In 2000 it was estimated that about 15,000 children from 9 to 12 were sold to plantations that year.

Clear-cut areas of the rainforest to grow cacao trees in the sun where they yield more beans but require a huge amount of irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizers because they’re more susceptible to disease, insects, and drying. 80% of the rainforest in the Ivory Coast that has been cleared is used for cacao trees.

The mono-culture (only one kind of plant grown in a huge area) destroys the biodiversity essential for many rainforest creatures.

Fair Trade Chocolate

Cocoa Camino, La Siembra (main Canadian importer of fair trade chocolate)

Sold at 10,000 Villages and many health food stores,

Purchase directly from plantations so they can ensure labour standards are met.

Grow cacao trees in the shade, the way they prefer to grow, requiring less irrigation and no pesticides or fertilizers.

Grown under the canopy of the natural rainforest, over 23 bat species, and huge variety of birds enjoy living in the cacao trees.

Sales of organic chocolates (grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilizers) are growing by 70% each year in the U.S.

The fair trade logo guarantees that producers have divided money equitably and used environmentally sound farming methods.


On Blackspot shoes:

Blackspot is our experiment with grassroots capitalism. After spending so many years railing against the practices of megacorporations like McDonalds, Starbucks and Nike, we wanted to prove that running an ethical business is possible.

The reality is that most of us have to buy shoes on a regular basis, so we wanted to introduce an option that is socially and environmentally responsible to a market that is sorely lacking in similar convictions.

Blackspot shoes are made with hemp, recycled tires and vegan leather and produced in fair-trade or unionized factories. We sell only to independent retailers worldwide in order to cycle money back into local economies.

Blackspot is also an open-source brand, which means that it can be used by anyone for any purpose at no cost. Our hope is that people with similar philosophies will be inspired by our experiment and start their own business ventures, spreading indie culture and providing ever more alternatives to buying from megacorporations. Blackspot is about more than marketing a brand or deconstructing the meaning of cool – it's about changing the way the world does business.


Weekly Eco-Challenges to date:

1. Drive Less
2. Give a Little

below the fold

Make Poverty History

This week we're having a canned food drive, so the eco-challenge is focusing on poverty. I'll have some of the following tid-bits of information on display along with some canned food.

"Poverty and environmental degradation go hand and hand. The lower your income in this country, the higher the likelihood that you will be exposed to toxics at home and on the job. The greater the risk that you will suffer from diseases -- ranging from asthma to cancer -- caused or exacerbated by environmental factors. The harder it will be for you to find and afford healthy food to put on your table. The less likely you are to live in a community that provides safe outdoor spaces for you and your family to enjoy. And, as recent history tragically exposed, the more vulnerable you are to environmental catastrophes, whether they are natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina or human-made tragedies like the Exxon Valdez.

In short, the worst consequences of environmental degradation are visited on the homes, workplaces, families, and bodies of the poor." (from here)

Second Harvest is a Toronto organization that collects perishable food about to be tossed out from grocery stores and restaurants and delivers them to food banks throughout the city. It started with just one person who saw food waste and hunger side by side and did something about it. What would it take to do that in our community?

Ontario recently passed a poverty reduction act which intends to reduce the number of children living in poverty by 25% in the next five year.

70% of all low-income children in Ontario live in families where at least one parent is working part-time or full-time, yet the families are unable to earn enough to lift family income above the poverty line. (from here)

Make Poverty History has an on-line form that people can submit directly to Stephen Harper to encourage him to make poverty a larger issue at the next G8 (G20) meeting in Haliburton next June (pictured here). Haliburton's beautiful, but do they realize June is the only month with mosquitoes and black flies? June is the only month I don't go to the cabin. Anyway, the form takes less than a minute to complete and send. Click on the link to make a change.

(It's not folding today.)
below the fold

Bike Rally How-To

Monday was world Car-Free day. It's hard to organize things early in the school year, so we'll be holding a Drive Less Week next week that includes a car-free day on Friday. We'll be ticketing cars with incentives to walk like we did last year. Then we're going to start weekly eco-challenges, so watch for them here every Friday. If you're a teacher, you can stay one week behind and not have to think about what to do with your environment club this year!

On Wednesday, we might actually have a Bike Rally. But we can't call it a "bike rally" because it encourages racing, so instead it's called "Raiders Ride for the Earth" which is pretty nice anyway.* This way we can include all forms of human-powered vehicles like skateboards and roller blades too. The only problem is we haven't had anyone sign up for it yet.


I asked my class if the $5 entrance fee was the problem. Most said "no," it's the biking they don't like. I carve out time to be able to go cycling, so that's a bit baffling to me. They said they'd pay $5 NOT to bike in the not-a-rally. That conversation was juxtaposed with Terry Fox Day celebrations at the grade school next door. As I got to school, 9 and 10-year-olds were all running around the block, and they were all struggling to run. It's not a big block. Well, at least they tried. Even the olympic torch is doing more driving than running.

Along with the ticketing and the ride, we're challenging people to walk any place they need to go that's under 3 km. In our display case, we'll have a map that shows exactly how far that is by including distances from the school to various landmarks around us. I chose that limit because I made my kids walk to gymnastics when they went at 8 and 10, and that's about 3 k. So, surely high school kids can make it that far. It's just for one week, but we're hoping once people start a challenge, they'll keep with it. Once they see how short of a distance 3 k really is, and how much better they feel walking more, maybe they'll like it. Or, they'll be late for work and never try it again!

Raiders Ride for the Earth How-To

This takes several weeks of planning and several months of waiting on approval from admin. We used to run car rallys annually, but people are much more wary of letting teens bicycle. There was a recent article in the local paper about how fearful people are of cycling even though we're about twelve times more likely to die from a car crash than a bike collision. Only about 5% of cycling accidents are caused by a car trying to pass a bike. Most of the rest common causes of accidents are because cyclists don't always pay attention to the rules of the road. This is unfortunate, yet at the same time it's lucky because there's an easy fix: teach cyclists the rules and enforce them. I hate cyclists who race through stop signs; it makes me look bad. Earlier in the week, at the Ontario Cycling summit, Jim Bradley agreed. We'll see where things go from here in our province. Anyway, back to the not-a-rally:

Before we got going we had to make sure we had enough students to organize and run each event, and had enough teacher supervisors for each event and for every road crossing.

Teams of four sign up and pay $5 each to participate. All proceeds will go to charity. The winning team gets to choose the charity. That's pretty much the grand prize. They go to four different activity areas in town and do a scavenger hunt to get points. They don't get points for speed, so anyone can attend. They get points for general awesomeness.

Teams go to the activity stations in different orders so there's not a backlog. One activity has them running a relay on a variety of kid toys including tricycles, a horse, and a wagon. The get points for speed and technique. At another they have to put extra-large lingerie over their clothes and sing karaoke at the city square. They get points for collecting the most change from strangers (for charity) for their performance. Another station has them balancing a bucket of water on their heads and walking through a mine-field of garbage. And the final one is a garbage sort relay where they have to correctly separate garbage into recycling, composting, bottles, paper, and garbage.

We'll provide each contestant with a clue to the first station, a pair of gloves, and a bag. As they ride, they must collect several types of garbage on the trails. We're lucky because our school is close to a trail that leads to a park and to the uptown. On top of all this, they'll also have to do a scavenger hunt that includes getting signatures on a petition for something, like more bike racks on the main street, and getting little things from local shops that have an environmental or social justice focus (10,000 Villages, etc.).

Back at the school, students will have to use a glue gun to make a piece of art with the garbage they collected. Judges will determine the most creative entry. Then drinks and treats will be had by all as the scores are tallied. We sent out letters asking for prizes from various cycling places in the city, but none responded so far.


Some Info and Quotations for a Display:

We're hoping to encourage more walking rather than encourage alternative cars. Electric cars still need electricity from somewhere, and it's often not from solar cells. Instead of finding new, less hazardous ways of getting around in cars, I prefer to focus on the healthiest types of transportation: cycling and walking.

Want to get healthier and save money? Walk or bike instead of driving.

Walking and biking...
slow the progression of disease
tone up your body
reduce blood pressure
improve your immune system
help maintain your mental ability
reduces stress
can relieve depression and anxiety
create safer communities
help you get to know neighbours
might make you live longer!

Cars increase...
climate change
the hole in the ozone layer
acid rain
urban sprawl
oil spills
landfills
smog
noise
road rage
water pollution run-off
accidental deaths!

Can we obliterate the car before it obliterates us? The longest journey begins with a single step, not with a turn of an ignition key.

A good resource for information is the book Divorce Your Car by Katie Alvord. We had several books in our info display also.

There was a critical mass held on World Car-Free Day, but I also advertised the ones held the last Friday of every month, which is today. We encouraged car pooling and car sharing. There was a proposal for bike sharing in Waterloo made over a year ago. We'll encourage students to write to our mayor to encourage that to be a reality.

After all this, let's just hope we get some takers!



***
*We're KCI Raiders with a pirate mascot. It used to be a horribly offensive 1st Nation mascot, so we decided to change it. That final decision was made just before the Somali pirate issue. Even before that I had hoped we could be raccoons, but I was outvoted.


below the fold

Compost Update

Check out our giant pile of compost! Typically I dig out the usable compost to add to my gardens in the spring, but at school, because it all sits all summer, it seems to make the most sense to dig it out in the first week of September before more stuff is added. Our horticulture teacher had me pile it beside the composter, and he'll get to it soon. Here's the pile. It's amazing to me how well this very simple task works with minimal effort. You can see a piece of eggshell that hasn't quite turned. And there's a few sticks in there. But mainly it's just rich fertile soil that can augment any garden. At home I dig it in about an inch deep between plants, and add some to the bare patches in the lawn before I throw down a mix of grass and clover seed. It beats chemical fertilizers.



In our region there are concerns about the half a million dollars it costs to take leaves off the curb. It's such a no-brainer that people should compost. It can work in apartment complexes too. I have several gardens and five people worth of food scraps and one bin like the one I made for school can easily handle it all. Yet so many have doubts, they just won't try it at home.

More's the pity.

And in other news, KCI's green efforts were lauded in the local paper, unfortunately they didn't mention the blog!


below the fold

Abstinence Education

Riding tandem on my last post, one way to cure the population problem, which some call the number one threat to the planet, is for people to stop having sex. And now there's a new product that can help people not have sex without harming the environment! No batteries needed because it works kind of like a wind-up toy. From the website: "Batteries discarded end up in our landfills around the world. Most batteries contain heavy metals (mercury, cadmium, lead), which are the main cause for environmental concern. If waste batteries are not disposed of correctly, heavy metals may leak when the battery corrodes, and so contribute to soil and water pollution and endanger wildlife. Increased levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide act to enhance the natural greenhouse effect and accelerate irreversible changes in the climate." See, they really do care.

That's it.
below the fold

The Population Problem

I saw 9 on the weekend. It's a great apocalyptic film, a warning about the dangers of technology, but the ending isn't clearly positive. Monsters are tricked and killed, but there's still no life as we define it - the type that eats, reproduces, etc. For a real happy ending I needed a little plant to struggle up through the rubble like in Wall-E.


Both films made me think of Alan Weisman's book The World Without Us which is the subject of an article in bitch this month. The book documents the probable outcome if people suddenly ceased to be. According to this book the world will take relatively little time to regenerate without people in the way trashing the place. The visual I had in my head when I read it was the Manhattan of I Am Legend, with deer running through a forest sprouting up through asphalt, but without all the zombies. We do not need to save the planet for its own sake; it will be fine on its own. We need to save it for our survival.

I loved the book until I got to his final conclusion: to save the world, we must regulate childbirth - one child per woman, no exceptions. Now that we are considering covering assisted reproductive services under Medicare in Canada, it has become a hot issue.

The problem with limiting women to one child in order to save the planet is that many people in the western world have few children already, the Canadian average is 1.6 children, yet we produce the most greenhouse gases - far more than parts of the world with a child per woman average closer to 5 or 6.

I think if I had fewer children I might have spent my excess cash on stuff for myself. I might actually have a car. We tend to spend what we make - at least - and without RESPs taking up a chunk of my pay, I could possibly be a much larger environmental problem. I would like to think that I would use my time and money for good, buy land and plant a mixed forest for instance, but, unfortunately, I am a pretty typical human being.

below the fold

Eco-Surveys

Katie at EcoChick conducted an environmental survey to check out the attitudes of 50 people in Toronto. We teach how to conduct surveys in social science courses, and it's an easy lesson to modify for an environmental focus. She found the deal breaker for most people was cutting down consumption, and that some didn't understand the environmental concerns with meat production.


I've said it before, but food is hard for me. I don't grow my own because I forget about it, and it all withers, rots or feeds the raccoons. For some reason though, I have no problems tending to a flower garden. And I completely understand the problems with meat production, but I still eat it (organic, grass fed, and free range when I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of convenience for the world). I've been vegetarian twice, both for 2-3 years at a time, and my biggest hurdle is it doesn't seem like a meal without meat. Intellectually, I understand this is just as mindless as people preferring tap water at a blind taste test but still insisting bottled is better. But on a gut level, there it is. I've been raised on meat and potatoes, and that's a lot of years of conditioning to try to overcome. I'm still working on it.

The problem I have with some surveys like this though, and particularly with the standard eco-footprint analysis, is there's often no good answer for people who are already very environmental. Two of the questions focus on cutting down on personal consumption. I really buy nothing but food and essentials. I was at a mall yesterday buying the two required pairs of running shoes for my daughter for school (one for indoors, one for out). Having not bought clothes for myself for years, a long-sleeved shirt caught my eye. The 80s are back, and it makes me feel like a teenager again. I tried it on, and the sleeves were made for someone who doesn't canoe all summer, so I put it back. Whew, that was close.

The eco-footprint calculators (this one's really cute even though it places me in Calgary, but this one is more educational) often increase the footprint if you never ride the bus as if it means you're driving instead. Or if you don't wash your car rarely, it means you wash it often instead of the possibility of never washing it or not owning a car.

These are minor concerns but good to keep in mind when students are creating surveys.

below the fold

On Necessities and Luxuries

We got a propane fridge at the cabin this year, and when it stopped working on the one time we were up for a week, it was really hard to go back to the cooler - to smelling the questionable milk before using it every time, and trying to keep the cold cuts from swimming in the water at the bottom. At home a fridge is a luxury I'm not ready to part with, unlike this blogger who unplugged it and deals with the consequences. Up north for a week, it's possible the propane we use for a small fridge might be similar to the gas we would otherwise use to go back and forth to town for ice, so I don't feel too guilty. As a good backwoods camper, I can survive without milk on my cereal or cheese on my nachos, but the kids aren't as accommodating. After years without, the fridge has become a necessity.


It's curious to me what we can live without. The blogger I linked can live without a fridge, but still uses a dryer. I haven't used our dryer for years. It's there in the basement for an emergency (like a flood??), far from the washer two floors higher - upstairs where all the clothes are kept. Without kids, I could manage without the washer too. I hand washed in first year university - too poor to go to a laundromat - and it wasn't so bad. But I like to know my perishables are safe to eat.

I know many people who won't put a glass of water under a tap and drink it. They've been convinced that bottled water is better. Even if they tell me they understand that our municipal water is much more heavily regulated, they insist the bottled stuff just tastes better. Even after blind tastes tests at our school showed students that most of them preferred the taste of tap water, they still walked away thinking bottle is best. Advertising is some powerful stuff.

Many friends with a strong environmental bent can't believe I survive the summers without air conditioning. We close the doors and windows and curtains when it's hot out, and open them all at night IF the temperature outside is cooler than the temperature inside. In these parts, I don't remember a heat wave ever lasting more than three weeks. After that long the house might get sticky, so we sleep outside. And maybe we don't get as much done during the heavy humid days, but that's okay. My kids have acclimatized to the heat; they didn't have a choice. And relatively speaking, it's barely a heat wave. This is Canada after all.

I've actually never lived anywhere that had A/C, so it's really easy for me to do without. That's the thing, really: once we get something, we can't remember how to cope without it. Yesterday's luxuries and all. I've also never owned a car, and I manage my in-town trips easily. A colleague once saw me at a mall about 10 k from home and insisted I couldn't have biked the whole way - as if someone must have dropped me and my bike off somewhere. The city grows smaller when you walk and bike everywhere.

If we can stop adding more and more luxuries to our lives, we can stop thinking we actually need them to cope with temperature changes and distances and dirt. But all those commercials and all those TV people and neighbours and friends that have all the new stuff are very very compelling.

If covetousness is a sin (it's right there in the top ten list), and tempting people to covet is even worse, and our laws are based on judeo-christian morality, then shouldn't advertising be illegal?

below the fold

Green Right to the Very End

The Star had an article about green burials in Cobourg, Ontario. I've always had issues with the way we're laid to rest, particularly the mahogany trees that have to be felled to contain a corpse. I'd be happy to be dumped in a pit reminiscent of the final scene in Amadeus. Now that's a real option - almost. There are no biodegradable body bags in Ontario, but we can be put in the ground in a cardboard box. One reluctant client (or client's daughter really) of a similar burial ground in Britain said the white cardboard casket reminded her of an IKEA flatbox, but nevertheless, it's the remnants of plentiful trees, not the solid boards of a less populous species. The law states that we have to be buried in something. If we're down far enough to avoid getting dug up by animals, I can't imagine the necessity for a container at all - as if a cardboard box will throw off the scent. It seems a formality, a sign of being civilized.


They don't embalm the body with chemicals either, so the body has to be buried quickly. This means the funeral can't be open casket - just as well if the casket reminds people of the Trondheim collection. In fact, if it's difficult to assemble people in a timely fashion, the funeral will likely have to take place after the burial. Personally I've never been thrilled with open-casket funerals anyway. The dead body is not the same as the person I knew. It's just a bag of bones. But for some people that will be the stopper.

Another potential stopper is the lack of any markers. There are no tombstones in green cemeteries, only wildflowers. They advertise that people can come to visit the meadow, instead of the one little plot of ground. In Britain they allow a tree to be buried on the actual plot to mark it, but that will be a problem if this takes off. Your tree of choice likely can't be contained to a three by six area. My mother was cremated, which is not at all eco-friendly, but it did allow me to keep her ashes under a tree at home.

But if markers aren't an issue, and not having a casket at the funeral is acceptable, then it seems a reasonable choice.

ETA - It was very unfortunate timing that I posted this shortly before we lost a student at our school. I'll keep it up because I do think how we embalm and bury our dead under a layer of cement is an important environmental issue to address, but I'll post more so it's not the first thing that comes up on the screen, although the tragedy has left me too distracted to write much lately.

below the fold

The End of Suburbia

I use this film, The End of Suburbia, to start students' understanding of cars, urban sprawl, media, and mass consumerism, and I segue into plastics, another petroleum-based product. If there's no petroleum for cars, we won't have any to make plastics either.

After reading Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast I actually question the peak oil theory. But even if we've got oodles of oil, it's being restricted in a way that's far beyond our control. No matter what, we've got to find ways to live without it. This film helps students understand how it all got so out-of-control.



The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream
(Gregory Greene, 2004, 78 min.)

The Thinkers:
James Howard Kunstler – The Geography of Nowhere (blog – kunstler.com)
Peter Calthorpe, Urban Designer – Sustainable Communities
Michael Klare, Prof at Hampshire College – Resource Wars
Richard Heinbert, Journalist – The Party’s Over
Matthew Simmons, CEO of Simmons Co. International, “insider” perspective
Michael C. Ruppert – From the Wilderness
Julian Darley, Environmental Philosopher – GlobalPublicMedia.com
Colin Campbell – The Coming Oil Crisis
Kenneth Deffeyes – Peak Oil: Hubbert’s Peak
Ali Samsam Bakhtiari – The Journal of the Iranian Petroleum Institute
Steve Andrews – Running on Empty

The U.S. makes up 4% of the population of the world, and uses 25% of its oil

“If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.” – Hardy

Benefits of Suburbia:

Space Affordability Convenience Family-centered Upward mobility
It’s the American Dream; but it’s not sustainable.

Suburbia is the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.

Suburbia is the dream of country living for the masses far from the city filled with
Pollution, noise, effluence, stenches, factories, vulgar worker culture…

1880s/1890s – like a manor in a park – best of city and country living
1910s – streetcar suburb
1920s mass motoring – automobile suburbs – cheap oil
depression and war – oil is cheaper than drinking water
1946-1950 – Veterans Energy Housing Program (post WWII American Dream)
- 5 million homes built in suburbs; everybody’s middle class now
- false promise; cartoon country living
- no connection with the country (river, forests, fields) just manufactured lawns
- no amenities of town – worst of city and country living
- destruction of cities; and big plans for cars

Car dependency

- GM destroyed rail-cars to sell gas powered buses and cars and make highways
- No suburbs if not for cheap oil to fuel cars

August 14, 2003 – power outage – “It’s a red light, but we didn’t get it!” - Simmons
“We have to grow electricity or we can’t grow our economy.”

*** We are at or near peak oil production worldwide – we will still have oil produced for a while, but it will decrease each year, and increase dramatically in price. We can no longer afford our lifestyles – our cars, home heating, air conditioning, etc. The gap between what we want and what we can have will grow, and this will cause multiple problems in the world. ***

** Dr. M. King Hubber, renowned geologist, predicted this problem in 1956. Why didn’t we listen?? Why didn’t we take precautions??

Predicted Consequences – worst case:
- What if US and China go to war over oil?
- No more trucks available to deliver food, so we’ll all starve.
- Decreased economic activity, recessions, then a never ending depression.
- Violence around filling stations.
- Government lies about why oil is so expensive; more dishonest wars.
- Tremendous struggle to maintain entitlements to suburbia.
- Electing maniacs who promise they can maintain our lifestyles.
- Scramble to get out of suburbia.
- Expect a war for the remainder of our lifetimes. The US must not allow any other country to take over oil reserves.
- Suburbs will be the slums of the future with crops growing on front lawns.

Predicted Consequences – pro-active community involvement:
- Dramatic change in individual lifestyles.
- Everything we do must be made smaller and more local. We must grow food closer to towns.
- Need more independent farming (no more fertilizers or pesticides available).
- New Urbanism – return to traditional communities; re-learning principles of town planning, classic grid development, and high-density at cores.
- Live locally (work, school, food production…), become less car-dependent, and pay attention to how you use energy.

** Will we listen now?? Will anyone take precautions? When the KCI rules were about to change, I warned students to find a place to sit and claim it as their own territory before everybody’s fighting for a place. But nobody moved out of the halls until forced.

Media
- The media’s silent because there’s no up-side
- The media is irresponsible, but we all have a short attention span; we can drag our attention from sports, entertainment, etc.
- Reality is bad for business.

Benefits of the Oil Crisis:
- better neighbours
- local energy formations (solar, wind…)
- a healthier environment

Quick Facts About Petroleum and Related Products

Fossil Fuels – non-renewable natural resources from the ground that can be burned to create energy; they contain hydrocarbons, so burning causes lots of pollution and global warming. Three main types – coal, petroleum, and natural gas.

Coal is a solid fossil fuel extracted from the ground by underground mining or open-pit mining; it’s disappearing (but not that fast), and it pollutes, creating global warming; it’s heated to make electricity, and can be converted to liquid fuel like gasoline and diesel fuel. It creates more pollution than the following two forms of fuel.

Petroleum / Crude Oil / Naphtha / Black Gold – it’s a liquid fossil fuel taken from the ground with pumps. This is what has hit peak production and will be increasing in price dramatically. It’s the raw material for solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics. Different products come directly from the separation of petroleum based on boiling points (fractional distillation) including methane, propane, gasoline, jet fuel, kerosene, diesel, paraffin wax, asphalt, and oil. Soon none of these products will be affordable.

Natural Gas – is a gaseous fossil fuel (different from gasoline) that’s mainly methane. It’s piped directly from the oil fields or swamps to your house for heating and cooking. It’s also on a quick decline along with petroleum.

Hydrogen Fuel – Usable as a fuel, but it’s produced from another energy source such as natural gas (48%), oil (30%), or coal (18%). We can’t create hydrogen fuel without the use of fossil fuels. Furthermore, we can’t make hydrogen cars without using massive amounts of fossil fuels. “It’s the public’s delusion to alleviate their fear - a very rational fear because there is no plan B.”

Alternatives – non-fossil fuel energy sources:

Bio-diesel – It’s fuel from vegetable oils or animal fats. It creates far less pollution than fossil fuels. However, it takes more energy to make ethanol than to use it. The production and land use may not justify the product.

Nuclear – very expensive, pollutes as it sits in the ground, radioactive spills and accidents are disastrous immediately and for many generations to come.

Wind Turbines – need a lot of space, and are currently very expensive.

Solar Power – it’s expensive to install initially, but will pay itself off quickly as fuel prices rise, and as the solar power market increases providing more products locally manufactured. The sun hits a photovoltaic cell which creates electricity. It can be used immediately, or stored in batteries for later use. Passive solar systems can be used to heat water for household use, and to heat homes by heating thermal masses (e.g. slabs of stone). It can manage all the needs of a very careful electricity user. Our desires must still be kept in check.

An incomplete list of types of plastic: Can we live without it?
1. Cellulose (1866)
Film, clothes, ping pong balls, fake ivory, combs, jewelry, old billiard balls
(highly flammable)
2. Rayon (1891)
modified cellulose, “man-made silk”, cellophone
3. Bakelite (1907)
Radios, televisions, clocks, jewelry, lamps, new billiard balls, buttons, electrical
insulators, added to wood metals for strengthening
4. Nylon (1920s) - polyamide
clothes, packaging
5. PVC (1920s) – poly vinyl chloride
records, food wrap, surgical gloves, vinyl siding, window blinds, piping, blister
packaging, credit cards, auto instrument panels, paints, rain coats, shrink wrap,
toys, upholstery, I.V. tubing, medical supplies
6. Saran (1933) – poly vinylidene chloride
protection of military equipment, food wrap
7. Teflon (1938)
non-stick pans
8. Polyethylene (PETE/HDPE) (1933)
Pop bottles, water bottles, packaging, film, toys, communication equipment
9. Silly Putty (1949)
toy
10. Polystyrene (1950s)
Styrofoam, plastic silverware, egg cartons, fast food packaging, plastic model kits, video cassettes, televisions
11. Velcro (1957)
reusable closure
12. Polypropylene (PP)
Yogurt/margarine containers, prostheses, carpets car bumpers, medicine bottles car seats, caulking, toys, fridge interiors
13. Polyurethanes
Mattresses, cushions, transportation, furniture, insulation, ski boots, toys
14. Unsaturated Polyesters
Lacquers, varnishes, paints
15. Epoxes
Glues, electrical wiring coating, helecopter blades
16. Acrylics
Lighting fixtures, auto parts
17. Resins - Printing inks
18. Latexes - Carpets, paints
19. Urea-formaldehyde - Insulation, laminates
20. Synthetic rubber - Neoprene, fuel hoses, machinery, rocket ships, swim goggles
21. Fiberglass

below the fold

Sharkwater

Sharkwater is an excellent film about the death of many sharks as they get tangled in fishing nets and the massive extermination for the delicacy, shark-fin soup. Warning - it's a very gruesome film (for what they do to the sharks). I'd be cautious about the students I show it to. To tell you the truth, my knees get weak at the silhouette of sharks above me in the water. I mean, photographs from that angle - not that I might actually be in the water with sharks. The film wasn't able to completely unbrainwash me from the grip of Jaws. I sometimes show it in Challenge and Change or in Civics.

I happened to catch the movie at the theatre the night Rob Stewart was speaking about how he made the film. He told us he was a cinematographer, not a film maker. He got a ride to a shark habitat on an anti-whaling boat, but got arrested before he ever made his destination. He kept the cameras rolling, and this film is the result.


He mentions that Paul Watson is commanding the Sea Shepherd. Paul Watson was an original member of Greenpeace, but separated, according to some, for tactics that were even too controversial by Greenpeace standards. Giving students the whole story there makes the film even more interesting.

Here's the handout I use to start discussion:

Sharkwater
(Rob Stewart, 2007, 90 min.)

Ecology

Sharks were here before the dinosaurs when there were only two continents. Killing them (90% reduction in the past 20 years) cuts off the head of the ecosystem. They are an important controlling agent. Plankton creates 70% of the oxygen of the planet. If sharks die, then the fish they would eat, the ones that feed on plankton, will flourish, and our oxygen will be affected. Life on land depends on life in the ocean.

Media and Money

People make money off sharks being dangerous; it’s good TV. We all love monsters because we love to hate. More people are killed each year by pop machines than by sharks. (And by crocodiles, elephants, cars, and starvation.)

Only the drug trade rivals shark fins for money. The Taiwan Mafia is wealthy enough to own private docks and buildings, and an entire neighbourhood in Puntarenas (the largest province in Costa Rica).

Paul Watson was a founder of Greenpeace. He left after conflict about his methods which include ramming into whaling and shark boats.

The UN has no rule-making authority over international waters. Nobody does.

Activism

Activists are necessary in order to stop letting people get away with things, or at least making them do their crimes in the light of day. Unless people devote their lives to solving the problems, nothing’s going to change. But we only need 5-7% of the population to make a difference.

We don’t understand what we are, conceited naked apes. In our minds we’re a divine legend, some sort of God who can decide who lives and who dies. The fact is, we’re just a bunch of primitives out of control. We’re in the midst of the third world war. The enemy is ourselves. The objective is to save us from ourselves.

"Social change comes from the passionate interests of a small group of individuals. Every major shift in the world, slavery, votes for women, civil rights, apartheid…, always from individuals with passion and energy to get involved. Individuals in non-governmental organizations passionately involved in protecting the ecosystems – that’s where I see some optimism. That’s where I see some things happening."

No species survives by ignoring the laws of ecology. We know what we’re during, and yet we’re allowing ourselves to do it.

Questions

1. Why do you think some people are willing to risk their lives to save others people or animals or the environment? What factors in a life might produce that kind of selflessness?

2. Why don’t governments stop shark killings internationally?

3. People get such joy in having power over those less powerful than we are. Domination feels good. Who could you have power over if you chose to, and can you restrain yourself from enjoying that type of domination? What’s more rewarding to you than the great feeling you could get from exercising power?

4. Comment on any other aspect of the film.

below the fold